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After a second circle of the claret, the hero caught his lieutenant's eye across the table, and said: "We must go out and talk over that law-business, Rip, before you go. Do you think the old lady has any chance?" "Not a bit!" said Ripton, authoritatively. "But it's worth fighting eh, Rip?" "Oh, certainly!" was Ripton's mature opinion. Richard observed that Ripton's father seemed doubtful.
Ripton gave him a commoner's obeisance; but getting to the door, the sense of the matter enlightened him. "It's a duel, my lord?" "No help for it, if his friends don't shut him up in Bedlam between this and to-morrow morning." Of all horrible things a duel was the worst in Ripton's imagination.
"I trust her to you, you see. Good-bye, you dear old soul." He smuggled a handful of gold into her keeping, and went to dine with his uncles, happy and hungry. Before they reached the hotel, they had agreed to draw Mrs. Lucy was to receive the name of Letitia, Ripton's youngest and best-looking sister. The heartless fellow proposed it in cruel mockery of an old weakness of hers.
Ripton's amazement lent him increased vehemence. "Why, you haven't had anything to eat since breakfast! Not hungry? I declare I'm starving. I feel such a gnawing I could eat dry bread and cheese!" Richard sneered: not for reasons that would have actuated a similar demonstration of the philosopher. "Come," cried Ripton, "at all events, tell us where you're going to stop."
Amor, the word she had in mind, certainly has a connection with Arson. But the delivery of a letter into Master Ripton's hands, furnished her with other and likelier appearances to study.
Richard repeated the intelligence to Ripton, who cried aloud that Tom was a brick. "He shan't suffer for it," said Richard, and pondered on a thicker rope and sharper file. "But will your cousin tell?" was Ripton's reflection. "He!" Richard's lip expressed contempt. "A ploughman refuses to peach, and you ask if one of our family will?" Ripton stood for the twentieth time reproved on this point.
He tumbled to the sofa and there stretched. Some minutes subsequent to Ripton's signalization of his devotion to the bridal pair, Mrs. Berry's maid entered the room to say that a gentleman was inquiring below after the young gentleman who had departed, and found her mistress with a tottering wineglass in her hand, exhibiting every symptom of unconsoled hysterics.
"These papers," he went on, fluttering Ripton's precious lucubrations in a waving judicial hand, "I shall retain. The day will come when he will regard them with shame. And it shall be his penance, his punishment, to do so! Stop!" he cried, as Ripton was noiselessly shutting his desk, "have you more of them, sir; of a similar description? Rout them out! Let us know you at your worst.
Convinced that events alone could stamp a mark on such stubborn flesh, he determined to wait for them, and crouched silent on the cake, with one finger downwards at Ripton's incision there, showing a crumbling chasm and gloomy rich recess. The eloquent indication was understood. "Dear! dear!" cried Mrs. Berry, "what a heap o' cake, and no one to send it to!"
Then did a thought of such urgency illumine Mrs. Berry, that she telegraphed, hand in air; awakening Ripton's lungs, for the coachman to stop, and ran back to the house. Richard chafed to be gone, but at his bride's intercession he consented to wait.
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